Was Marc Chagall multilingual?

A conversation last night with a lovely art lover piqued my curiosity to check if indeed Marc Chagall was indeed multilingual. Angela as was her name, had observed that most great artists spoke several languages. As she shared these thoughts, the first name that popped in my mind was of Marc Chagall who, as it turned out later, was her favorite artist from childhood. I opined that, possibly, the challenge of expressing something that is essentially spiritual through physical means necessitates skills which are similar to those of communicating in a multi-cultural environment.

Was Marc Chagall multilingual? Most certainly! Just see his “Cubist Landscape” – 1918

To quote Harshav further:

“Apparently, Chagall wrote the number of repetitions in each language as the number of years spent there. The basis is Yiddish (in small letters), then eight (ten?) years in Russian (1900-1910), then four years in French (1910-1914), then again four years in Russian (1914-1918), culminating in the Art College.”